iriver Announces $1,300 Portable Music Player

The AK120 promises audiophile quality in a portable package.

Some people love their music — so much that they only settle for the finest audio equipment. That goes for both in and out of the house. Inside the house, you have a lot of different selections. For when you’re on the go, there’s the Astell&Kern AK120 Professional High-End Portable MQS Player.

The AK120 is actually the second model from the Astell&Kern line of MQS portable players. Astell&Kern is iriver’s high-end brand, which launched in 2012 with the first MQS (Mastering Quality Sound) portable player. Consider this to be an upgrade.

The AK120 comes packing two DACs (Digital to Analog Converters) to output audio signals independently to each channel. Other features include separate Wolfson WM8740 DAC chips for the left and right channel, as well as a Gapless playback feature and preset EQ settings. It also has 64GB of built-in memory and two MicroSD card slots, so you can expand that storage up to 192GB.

Featuring a brushed black metal finish and its own handmade Italian-designed leather case, the AK120 will ship soon with an MSRP of $1,300.